Monoplies tho' in certain cases useful ought to be granted with caution,
and guarded with strictness agst abuse. The Constitution of the U. S. has
limited them to two cases, the authors of Books, and of useful inventions, in
both which they are considered as a compensation for a benefit actually gained
to the community as a purchase of property which the owner might otherwise
withold from public use. There can be no just objection to a temporary monopoly
in these cases but it ought to be temporary, because under that limitation a
sufficient recompence and encouragement may be given. The limitation is
particularly proper in the case of inventions, because they grow so much out of
preceding ones that there is the less merit in the authors and because for the
same reason, the discovery might be expected in a short time from other
hands.

Monopolies have been granted in other Countries, and by some of the
States in this, on another principle, that of supporting some useful
undertaking untill experience and success should render the monopoly
unnecessary, & lead to a salutary competition. This was the policy of the
monopoly granted in Virga to Col. Jno Hoomes to establish a passenger-stage
from ____ to ____ But grants of this sort can be justified in very peculiar
cases only, if at all, the danger being very great that the good resulting from
the operation of the monopoly, will be overbalanced by the evil effect of the
precedent, and it being not impossible that the monopoly itself, in its
original operation, may produce more evil than good.

In all cases of monopoly, not excepting those specified in favor of
authors & inventors, it would be well to reserve to the State, a right to
terminate the monopoly by paying a specified and reasonable sum. This would
guard against the public discontents resulting from the exorbitant gains of
individuals, and from the inconvenient restrictions combined with them. This
view of the subject suggested, the clause in the bill relating to J. Rumsey in
the Virga Legislature in the year 178_ providing that the State might cancel
his privilege by paying him ten thousand dollars and to secure him agst the
possibility of a payment in depreciated medium, then a prevalent apprehension,
it was proposed that the sum should be paid in metal & that of a specified
weight & fineness.

One objection to a Bank is that it involves a qualified monopoly, and
the objection certainly has weight in proportion to the degree & duration
of the monopoly.

Perpetual monopolies of every sort, are forbidden not only by the genius
of free Govts, but by the imperfection of human foresight. (Among such
monopolies, cannot be included the grants in perpetuity of public lands to
individuals, the grants being made according to rules of impartiality, for a
valuable consideration, and all lands being held equally by that tenure from
the public, the vital principle of monopoly is lost. The benefit is not
confined to one or a few, but is enjoyed by the whole or a majority of the
Community. The evil of an excessive & dangerous cumulation of landed
property in the hands of individuals is best precluded by the prohibition of
entails, by the suppression of the right of primogeniture, and by the liability
of landed property to the payment of debts. In Countries where there is a rapid
increase of population as the U. S. these provisions are evidently sufficient;
and in all countries wd probably be found so.) Where charters of incorporation,
even the common ones to towns for the sake of local police, contain clauses
implying contracts, and irrevocabily, they are liable to objections of equal
force. The ordinary limitation on incorporated Societies is a proviso that
their laws shall not violate the laws of the land. But how easily may it happen
that redress for such violations may not be pursued into effect? How much
injury may accrue during the pursuit of redress. And above all how much local
injustice and oppression may be committed by laws & regulations, not in
strict construction violating any law of the land. Within the local limits,
parties generally exist, founded on different sorts of property, sometimes on
divisions by streets or little streams; frequently on political and religious
differences. Attachments to rival individuals, are not seldom a source of the
same divisions. In all these cases the party animosities are the more violent
as the compass of the Society may more easily admit of the contagion &
collision of the passions; and according to that violence is the danger of
oppression by one party on the other; by the majority on the minority. The ways
in which this can be effected, even beyond the cognizance of the paramount law
of the land have scarce any other limits than the ingenuity and interest of
those who possess the power. Is a tax to be collected? What inequality may
attend the rule or modes of assessment? Is a public building to be erected,
what is to guard agst partiality or favoritism in fixing its site? Is there a
single regulation of police which will not differently affect the component
parts of the society, and afford an opportunity to the majority to sacrifice to
their prejudices or their conveniency the conveniency or the interests of the
minor party.

When the town incorporated is not only a Market town for the
neighbourhood, but a port for an external commerce the effect of its police has
a wider range, and its corporate powers the greater need of some other controul
than the vague & inefficient one, of the law of the land.

The best illustration of these remarks is to be found in the recorded
proceedings of the various local Corporations. What is generally known
sufficiently justifies them. Without even a recurrence to facts a common
knowledge of human nature, would suggest the probability of the abuses on which
they are founded.

The most effectual & perhaps the least exceptionable provision agst
them, seems to be that of superadding to the general restraint of the law of
the land, a previous veto in some impartial & convenient quarter on each
particular by law. The Executive authority of the State or that authority in
consultation with a judge or judges of the highest grade might perhaps be
relied on for the controul on these local legislatures, most likely to preserve
a just, a uniform, and an impartial exercise of their subordinate powers.

The danger of silent accumulations & encroachments by Ecclesiastical
Bodies have not sufficiently engaged attention in the U. S. They have the noble
merit of first unshackling the conscience from persecuting laws, and of
establishing among religious Sects a legal equality. If some of the States have
not embraced this just and this truly Xn principle in its proper latitude, all
of them present examples by which the most enlightened States of the old world
may be instructed; and there is one State at least, Virginia, where religious
liberty is placed on its true foundation and is defined in its full latitude.
The general principle is contained in her declaration of rights, prefixed to
her Constitution: but it is unfolded and defined, in its precise extent, in the
act of the Legislature, usually named the Religious Bill, which passed into a
law in the year 1786. Here the separation between the authority of human laws,
and the natural rights of Man excepted from the grant on which all political
authority is founded, is traced as distinctly as words can admit, and the
limits to this authority established with as much solemnity as the forms of
legislation can express. The law has the further advantage of having been the
result of a formal appeal to the sense of the Community and a deliberate
sanction of a vast majority, comprizing every sect of Christians in the State.
This act is a true standard of Religious liberty: its principle the great
barrier agst usurpations on the rights of conscience. As long as it is
respected & no longer, these will be safe. Every provision for them short
of this principle, will be found to leave crevices at least thro' which bigotry
may introduce persecution; a monster, that feeding & thriving on its own
venom, gradually swells to a size and strength overwhelming all laws divine
& human.

Ye States of America, which retain in your Constitutions or Codes, any
aberration from the sacred principle of religious liberty, by giving to Caesar
what belongs to God, or joining together what God has put asunder, hasten to
revise & purify your systems, and make the example of your Country as pure
& compleat, in what relates to the freedom of the mind and its allegiance
to its maker, as in what belongs to the legitimate objects of political &
civil institutions.

Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the
Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical
Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short
history. (See the cases in which negatives were put by J. M. on two bills passd
by Congs and his signature withheld from another. See also attempt in Kentucky
for example, where it was proposed to exempt Houses of Worship from taxes.

The most notable attempt was that in Virga to establish a Genl
assessment for the support of all Xn sects. This was proposed in the year by P.
H. and supported by all his eloquence, aided by the remaining prejudices of the
Sect which before the Revolution had been established by law. The progress of
the measure was arrested by urging that the respect due to the people required
in so extraordinary a case an appeal to their deliberate will. The bill was
accordingly printed & published with that view. At the instance of Col:
George Nicholas, Col: George Mason & others, the memorial &
remonstrance agst it was drawn up, (which see) and printed Copies of it
circulated thro' the State, to be signed by the people at large. It met with
the approbation of the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Quakers, and the few
Roman Catholics, universally; of the Methodists in part; and even of not a few
of the Sect formerly established by law. When the Legislature assembled, the
number of Copies & signatures prescribed displayed such an overwhelming
opposition of the people, that the proposed plan of a genl assessmt was crushed
under it; and advantage taken of the crisis to carry thro' the Legisl: the Bill
above referred to, establishing religious liberty. In the course of the
opposition to the bill in the House of Delegates, which was warm &
strenuous from some of the minority, an experiment was made on the reverence
entertained for the name & sanctity of the Saviour, by proposing to insert
the words "Jesus Christ" after the words "our lord" in the preamble, the object
of which, would have been, to imply a restriction of the liberty denned in the
Bill, to those professing his religion only. The amendment was discussed, and
rejected by a vote of agst. (See letter of J. M. to Mr Jefferson dated ____.)
The opponents of the amendment having turned the feeling as well as judgment of
the House agst it, by successfully contending that the better proof of
reverence for that holy name wd be not to profane it by making it a topic of
legisl. discussion, & particularly by making his religion the means of
abridging the natural and equal rights of all men, in defiance of his own
declaration that his Kingdom was not of this world. This view of the subject
was much enforced by the circumstance that it was espoused by some members who
were particularly distinguished by their reputed piety and Christian
zeal.

But besides the danger of a direct mixture of Religion & civil
Government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded agst in the indefinite
accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by
ecclesiastical corporations. The power of all corporations, ought to be limited
in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source
of abuses. A warning on this subject is emphatically given in the example of
the various Charitable establishments in G. B. the management of which has been
lately scrutinized. The excessive wealth of ecclesiastical Corporations and the
misuse of it in many Countries of Europe has long been a topic of complaint. In
some of them the Church has amassed half perhaps the property of the nation.
When the reformation took place, an event promoted if not caused, by that
disordered state of things, how enormous were the treasures of religious
societies, and how gross the corruptions engendered by them; so enormous &
so gross as to produce in the Cabinets & Councils of the Protestant states
a disregard, of all the pleas of the interested party drawn from the sanctions
of the law, and the sacredness of property held in religious trust. The history
of England during the period of the reformation offers a sufficient
illustration for the present purpose.

Are the U. S. duly awake to the tendency of the precedents they are
establishing, in the multiplied incorporations of Religious Congregations with
the faculty of acquiring & holding property real as well as personal? Do
not many of these acts give this faculty, without limit either as to time or as
to amount? And must not bodies, perpetual in their existence, and which may be
always gaining without ever losing, speedily gam more than is useful, and in
time more than is safe? Are there not already examples in the U. S. of
ecclesiastical wealth equally beyond its object and the foresight of those who
laid the foundation of it? In the U. S. there is a double motive for fixing
limits in this case, because wealth may increase not only from additional
gifts, but from exorbitant advances in the value of the primitive one In grants
of vacant lands, and of lands in the vicinity of growing towns & Cities the
increase of value is often such as if foreseen, would essentially controul the
liberality confirming them The people of the U. S. owe their Independence &
their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea,
the magnitude of the evil comprized in the precedent Let them exert the same
wisdom, in watching agst every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and
growing up from small beginnings Obsta principiis

see the Treatise of Father Paul on beneficiary
matters

Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent
with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom?

In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The
Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a
national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship
for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion,
elected by a majority of them, and these are to be paid out of the national
taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment,
applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well
as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by
Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation?

The establishment of the chaplainship to Congs is a palpable violation
of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional pnnciples. The tenets of the
chaplains elected shut the door of worship agst the members whose creeds &
consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority. To say nothing of
other sects, this is the case with that of Roman Catholics & Quakers who
have always had members in one or both of the Legislative branches. Could a
Catholic clergyman ever hope to be appointed a Chaplain? To say that his
religious pnnciples are obnoxious or that his sect is small, is to lift the
evil at once and exhibit in its naked deformity the doctrine that religious
truth is to be tested by numbers, or that the major sects have a right to
govern the minor.

If Religion consist in voluntary acts of individuals, singly, or
voluntarily associated, and it be proper that public functionaries, as well as
their Constituents shd discharge their religious duties, let them like their
Constituents, do so at their own expence. How small a contribution from each
member of Congs wd suffice for the purpose? How just wd it be in its principle?
How noble in its exemplary sacrifice to the genius of the Constitution, and the
divine right of conscience? Why should the expence of a religious worship be
allowed for the Legislature, be paid by the public, more than that for the Ex.
or Judiciary branch of the Govt.

Were the establishment to be tried by its fruits, are not the daily
devotions conducted by these legal Ecclesiastics, already degenerating into a
scanty attendance, and a tiresome formality?

Rather than let this step beyond the landmarks of power have the effect
of a legitimate precedent, it will be better to apply to it the legal aphorism
de minimis non curat lex or to class it cum "maculis quas aut incuria fudit,
aut humana parum cavit natura."

Better also to disarm in the same way, the precedent of Chaplainships
for the army and navy, than erect them into a political authority in matters of
religion. The object of this establishment is seducing, the motive to it is
laudable. But is it not safer to adhere to a right principle, and trust to its
consequences, than confide in the reasoning however specious in favor of a
wrong one. Look thro' the armies & navies of the world, and say whether in
the appointment of their ministers of religion, the spiritual interest of the
flocks or the temporal interest of the Shepherds, be most in view whether here,
as elsewhere the political care of religion is not a nominal more than a real
aid. If the spirit of armies be devout, the spirit out of the armies will never
be less so, and a failure of religious instruction & exhortation from a
voluntary source within or without, will rarely happen and if such be not the
spirit of armies, the official services of their Teachers are not likely to
produce it. It is more likely to flow from the labours of a spontaneous zeal.
The armies of the Puritans had their appointed Chaplains, but without these
there would have been no lack of public devotion in that devout age.

The case of navies with insulated crews may be less within the scope of
these reflections. But it is not entirely so. The chance of a devout officer,
might be of as much worth to religion, as the service of an ordinary chaplain.
But we are always to keep in mind that it is safer to trust the consequences of
a right principle, than reasonings in support of a bad one.

Religious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings
& fasts are shoots from the same root with the legislative acts
reviewed.

Altho' recommendations only, they imply a religious agency, making no
part of the trust delegated to political rulers.

The objections to them are, 1. that Govts ought not to interpose in
relation to those subject to their authority but in cases where they can do it
with effect. An advisory Govt is a contradiction in terms. 2. The
members of a Govt as such can in no sense, be regarded as possessing an
advisory trust from their Constituents in their religious capacities. They
cannot form an ecclesiastical Assembly, Convocation, Council, or Synod, and as
such issue decrees or injunctions addressed to the faith or the Consciences of
the people. In their individual capacities, as distinct from their official
station, they might unite in recommendations of any sort whatever, in the same
manner as any other individuals might do. But then their recommendations ought
to express the true character from which they emanate. 3. They seem to imply
and certainly nourish the erroneous idea of a national religion. The
idea just as it related to the Jewish nation under a theocracy, having been
improperly adopted by so many nations which have embraced Xnity, is too apt to
lurk in the bosoms even of Americans, who in general are aware of the
distinction between religious & political societies. The idea also of a
union of all to form one nation under one Govt in acts of devotion to the God
of all is an imposing idea. But reason and the principles of the Xn religion
require that all the individuals composing a nation even of the same precise
creed & wished to unite in a universal act of religion at the same time,
the union ought to be effected thro' the intervention of their religious not of
their political representatives. In a nation composed of various sects, some
alienated widely from others, and where no agreement could take place thro' the
former, the interposition of the latter is doubly wrong. 4. The tendency of the
practice, to narrow the recommendation to the standard of the predominant sect.
The 1st proclamation of Genl Washington dated Jany 1 1795 (see if this was the
1st) recommending a day of thanksgiving, embraced all who believed in a supreme
ruler of the Universe. That of Mr Adams called for a Xn worship. Many private
letters reproached the Proclamations issued by J M for using general terms,
used in that of Presidt W—n, and some of them for not inserting
particulars according with the faith of certain Xn sects. The practice if not
strictly guarded naturally terminates in a conformity to the creed of the
majority and a single sect, if amounting to a majority. 5. The last & not
the least objection is the liability of the practice to a subserviency to
political views, to the scandal of religion, as well as the increase of party
animosities. Candid or incautious politicians will not always disown such
views. In truth it is difficult to frame such a religious Proclamation
generally suggested by a political State of things, without referring to them
in terms having some bearing on party questions. The Proclamation of Pres. W.
which was issued just after the suppression of the Insurrection in Penna and at
a time when the public mind was divided on several topics, was so construed by
many. Of this the Secretary of State himself, E Randolph seems to have had an
anticipation.

The original draught of that Instrument filed in the Dept of State (see
copies of these papers on the files of J. M.) in the hand writing of Mr.
Hamilton the Secretary of the Treasury. It appears that several slight
alterations only had been made at the suggestion of the Secretary of State, and
in a marginal note in his hand, it is remarked that "In short this proclamation
ought to savour as much as possible of religion, & not too much of having a
political object." In a subjoined note in the hand of Mr. Hamilton, this remark
is answered by the counter-remark that "A proclamation of a Government which is
a national act, naturally embraces objects which are political" so
naturally, is the idea of policy associated with religion, whatever be
the mode or the occasion, when a function of the latter is assumed by those in
power.

During the administration of Mr. Jefferson no religious proclamation was
issued. It being understood that his successor was disinclined to such
interpositions of the Executive and by some supposed moreover that they might
originate with more propriety with the Legislative Body, a resolution was
passed requesting him to issue a proclamation (see the resolution in the
Journals of Congress).

It was thought not proper to refuse a compliance altogether, but a form
& language were employed, which were meant to deaden as much as possible
any claim of political right to enjoin religious observances by resting these
expressly on the voluntary compliance of individuals, and even by limiting the
recommendation to such as wished simultaneous as well as voluntary performance
of a religious act on the occasion. The following is a copy of the proclamation
(see it in the files of J. M.).